Trump loves the massive grift he’s running on the nation — and knows he can’t win a fair election

AlterNet logoWhen I was growing up at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, back in the early 1960s, my mother drove down to Kansas City one morning to go shopping and have lunch with an old friend of her mother’s. Ladies going out shopping and having lunch in the upscale Country Club Plaza in Kansas City was almost a formal occasion. I remember she put on a summery suit and heels and stockings, and I’m pretty sure she wore a pair of white cotton gloves.

When she returned a few hours later, she wasn’t carrying any bags from the shops, and she was seething. The woman she’d eaten lunch with was married to a man who owned a chain of downtown hotels in major cities around the country. They lived in a big Tudor house in Mission Hills, the Beverly Hills of the Midwest. She drove a Cadillac. She was rich.

Why was my mother so angry? Well, it was what her mother’s friend talked about throughout their lunch. That week, she had gone to the bankruptcy auction of a chain of Midwestern drug stores and had bought a thousand pairs of stockings for a nickel apiece. She couldn’t stop talking about it, my mother said. She’d bought 50 makeup compacts, a hundred bottles of her favorite nail polish and a hundred color-matching Revlon lipsticks. She’d gotten the whole load — the stockings and the makeup and the nail polish — for less than $100.

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Pentagon official testifies about withheld military aid to Ukraine

Laura Cooper’s closed-door testimony could strengthen the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

A Pentagon official who sought the release of U.S. military aid to Ukraine — withheld by the White House amid attempts to persuade Ukraine to investigate President Donald Trump’s political rivals — testified Wednesday to House impeachment investigators about her knowledge of the episode amid attempts by the Trump administration to block her appearance.

Laura Cooper — the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia — appeared despite an effort by the Pentagon to block her cooperation. Her testimony was also delayed for more than five hours Wednesday after dozens of House Republicans stormed the secure facility inside the Capitol where investigators were set to depose her.

An official who works on the impeachment inquiry said Cooper testified for more than three hours behind closed doors under subpoena — a repeat of the tactic lawmakers have used to circumvent other attempts by the Trump administration to block witnesses from complying with interview requests.